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I thought the Titanic disaster was pretty well-explained as an accident caused by incompetence and hubris. The ship wasn't "unsinkable"; they just advertised i

by magduf 7y ago

I thought the Titanic disaster was pretty well-explained as an accident caused by incompetence and hubris. The ship wasn't "unsinkable"; they just advertised it that way, but it was no match for a big iceberg. The ship was sailing through an area with icebergs, and going fast too, and it was nighttime. IIRC, the captain was in a rush to get to the destination (sorry, it's been a while since I watched Cameron's movie). Really, all it took was the decision to go full-speed through an area with icebergs at night to cause that disaster. Then other stuff afterwards was sheer incompetence and classism, like not fully filling the lifeboats. Assassinating one person by sinking a whole ship is a pretty crazy way to kill someone; it's surely far easier to just hire someone to club him when he's walking the street somewhere. However, with Epstein, there's no such similarity: he was the only one to die, and since he was locked up in prison, anyone wanting to kill him really didn't have much choice, if they wanted to get him before he testified against someone. And there do seem to be a disturbing number of things that went "wrong" for this to happen.

lazyasciiart 7y ago
You might be interested in the investigation into the death of Sandra Bland, which also found a disturbing number of things going wrong in the Texas jail system. Or probably any other investigation into any jail/prison in the US. A guy died of dehydration in a county jail in Washington. How ridiculous does that sound? (Keaton Farris, if you want to read more about it).
magduf 7y ago
Addendum: after watching an interesting YouTube video on the disaster, it seems that not filling the lifeboats actually wasn't all that incompetent. A lot of people didn't think the boat was really sinking, and there was another large ship within visual distance which could see them and their flares, and which they were radioing for help, so they thought help was going to be there very shortly if they needed it. Unfortunately, there was some very serious incompetence going on at that ship: the radio operator had gone to sleep for the night, and the captain, despite seeing many flares, decided not to bother investigating. After the disaster, apparently his story changed every time he was asked. Anyway, I think my point stands: trying to murder someone by engineering a disaster at sea like this is pretty ridiculous; too many things have to go wrong all at the same time, which really aren't under control of any one person or small group. Getting the captain to speed through iceberg territory (and honestly, there weren't that many icebergs, they were just unlucky and happened across a big one), making sure a large iceberg was directly ahead, making sure just enough compartments flooded, making sure the radio operator on the other ship went to bed, making sure the captain of the nearby ship refused to investigate, and finally when help did arrive (and it did), making sure the assassination target somehow wasn't among the survivors. Killing someone in a prison cell where there's no witnesses except a camera or two (that "just happened" to be "malfunctioning") and a couple of guards to bribe is actually realistic and possible, especially if state-level operatives are involved.

by magduf 7y ago

lazyasciiart 7y ago

You might be interested in the investigation into the death of Sandra Bland, which also found a disturbing number of things going wrong in the Texas jail system. Or probably any other investigation into any jail/prison in the US. A guy died of dehydration in a county jail in Washington. How ridiculous does that sound? (Keaton Farris, if you want to read more about it).

magduf 7y ago

Addendum: after watching an interesting YouTube video on the disaster, it seems that not filling the lifeboats actually wasn't all that incompetent. A lot of people didn't think the boat was really sinking, and there was another large ship within visual distance which could see them and their flares, and which they were radioing for help, so they thought help was going to be there very shortly if they needed it. Unfortunately, there was some very serious incompetence going on at that ship: the radio operator had gone to sleep for the night, and the captain, despite seeing many flares, decided not to bother investigating. After the disaster, apparently his story changed every time he was asked. Anyway, I think my point stands: trying to murder someone by engineering a disaster at sea like this is pretty ridiculous; too many things have to go wrong all at the same time, which really aren't under control of any one person or small group. Getting the captain to speed through iceberg territory (and honestly, there weren't that many icebergs, they were just unlucky and happened across a big one), making sure a large iceberg was directly ahead, making sure just enough compartments flooded, making sure the radio operator on the other ship went to bed, making sure the captain of the nearby ship refused to investigate, and finally when help did arrive (and it did), making sure the assassination target somehow wasn't among the survivors. Killing someone in a prison cell where there's no witnesses except a camera or two (that "just happened" to be "malfunctioning") and a couple of guards to bribe is actually realistic and possible, especially if state-level operatives are involved.